Kamen Rider Kiva is the ninth series of the Heisei Era of the Kamen Rider franchise. The show is said to have a horror film theme with our lead Rider, Kiva being based on a vampire and his Arm Monsters being based on various movie monsters. This show kicks off on the 70th birthday of the show’s creator, Shotaro Ishinomori.
Since I am pretty busy, I will quote the summary of the first episode from Wikipedia:
In 1986, at a funeral, a recently deceased man wakes up from his coffin and transforms into a monster known as Fangire. After he attacks a young woman, draining her of her Life Energy and turning her into a material similar to glass, the Spider Fangire is confronted by a woman named Yuri Aso, who attempts to destroy him before he escapes. Later, at the Café mald'amour, Yuri's employer Mamoru Shima tells her to target a young businessman named Kaoru Tsugami, who actually is the Horse Fangire. She finds Tsugami as he is about to eat his sixth secretary, but he calls his bodyguards to hold her off. Though she manages to give them the slip, she is too late to save the woman as she fights the Horse Fangire. However, before the fight could go any further, she is stopped by the man she met while escaping Tsugami's bodyguards: Otoya Kurenai. This little distraction allowed Tsugami to escape.~~~Twenty-two years later in 2008, a young man named Wataru Kurenai is gathering fish bones for a project of his to create the ultimate violin varnish, attracting the attention of Yuri's daughter, Megumi Aso, who makes him realize he is not allergic to the world. Megumi soon attracts Tsugami's attention, inviting her to model for his studio as an excuse to feed on her. However, Megumi uses Tsugami's scheme to get to him to finish what her mother started. Angry for being tricked, Tsugami assumes his true form and attempts to kill Megumi until Wataru arrives, with Kivat-bat the 3rd allowing him to transform into Kamen Rider Kiva and battle the Horse Fangire. After Kiva shatters the Fangire with his Darkness Moon Break, Castle Doran emerges to devour the Horse Fangire's soul before it can escape. Once the fight ends, however, Megumi attempts to take down Kiva.
As the series progressed, we are introduced Nago Keisuke, a bounty hunter who has an odd hobby of collecting buttons from his victims and the user of the IXA (Intercept X Attacker) System in the year 2008. While on 1986, we are introduced to Jirou, a regular of the café in which the organization were Yuri is working in hang out. Otoya later discovers that his rival is a Wolfen, a werewolf based monster and one of the three races that the Fangires anhilated.
We are then slowly introduced to the Checkmate Four, the leaders of the Fangire race and the reason why the events that happened to the 80’s are important to the events in 2008.
On to my review, when I first watched Kiva, I said to myself, what is the point of having a 1986 storyline in a show that focuses only to Kiva/Wataru Kurenai if they can do a 2-3 part episode about the origin of Kiva like what Agito did? As the show progressed, I slowly understand why the 1986 timeline is important. All the events that happened in the 80’s are connected to the present.
Now, to the individual storyline per timeline, in the 1986 timeline, it was focused on Otoya, the father of Wataru/Kamen Rider Kiva and his adventures. While on the 2008 timeline, it was focused on Wataru’s development as a person. To be honest, there are some instances that Otoya felt like he is the show’s lead and not his son. I mean seriously, he carries the show. Wataru’s story felt like climax on what Otoya did considering that he mostly finishes the Fangire that the 80’s Blue Sky Organization didn’t finished.
Kiva carried what Den-O left… and these are: time travel and mecha battles. I have nothing against with these because the time travel bit connected the 80’s and 2008, while the mecha battles help finished the Fangire that combined together and formed into. A. Giant. Monster. Wow. The gap between Super Sentai and Kamen Rider is slowly diminishing.
As for the character development, Wataru is by far, one of the best examples of character development in Kamen Rider. First, he started out as a person who is “allergic” to the world. Slowly, he is opening up to people aside from Shizuka, first it was Megumi then Nago and the list goes on. From a regular shut-in, he transformed into a badass Rider… even though he seldom uses his bike and later appeared in Decade as the representative of the Heisei Seniors Riders.
As for the show’s vampires, the Fangires, they returned my losing faith on vampires. They returned the sorta immortal (Heck, the Spider Fangire was alive for more than one episode!) and blood (In Fangire’s case, life) sucking creatures with epic stain-glass features and chess references. But even with the good things about it, like most vampires, it MUST have a love story. In the 80’s we have the love triangle between Jacob-Bella-Edward I mean, Yuri-Otoya-Maya. One thing that I liked about the 80’s love story is that Maya started out as someone who is experimenting about loving humans but in the end, he fell for Otoya. While for Yuri, she is a member of the Blue Sky Organization who at first, fell in love with Jirou and slowly harbors feelings for Otoya. Unlike certain Twilight, their love story has a certain depth. While in 2008, it is about the love story of Wataru and Mio who doesn’t know that they are enemies. Tragic. In terms of the 2008 love story, it is pretty common at first until it develops a twist at the middle of the love story.
Now to the disappointments, first, is the overuse of Kiva’s Emperor Form. To be honest, most ultimate or final forms are used if the enemy is strong. In Kiva’s case, after its first appearance, he frequently used it and there are times that I forgot that he has a base form! Even Tatsulot explains that the Emperor Form is Kiva’s “true form”. Shut up, bat-like dragon thing. After he was able to pull the Zanbat Sword from the wall of Castle Doran, which is when it felt that Emperor Form is one of the weakest ultimate forms I have ever seen next to Den-O’s Liner Form.
Another disappointment is the lack of motorcycle action. Its predecessor, Den-O has a lot of biking action thanks to its used as the train’s steering and Den-O’s (not Ryotaro’s) regular transportation. In Kiva, we barely saw his bike the last time we saw it is when he attacks a bunch of Fangires while going to his mother’s place as for Nago’s bike, IXAlion, the last time we saw it is after he fought Kiva with his bike attached with Buron Booster and don’t get me started with it! So far, those disappointments never ruined the plot.
Overall, Kamen Rider Kiva is so far, one of my favorites in the Heisei era. It has a balanced plot and is close to the original Kamen Rider theme.